Why Johnny Can’t Read Anything Other Than Pronouns

Why Johnny Can’t Read Anything Other Than Pronouns - WSJ
Schools have become laboratories for esoteric ideological projects, not centers of learning.

The Supreme Court reinstated a lower-court ruling this week that said California schools must notify the parents of children who start asking to use new pronouns or otherwise take steps to adopt a “gender identity” at school that is different from their sex. 

In an unsigned 6-3 decision—the liberal justices dissented—the court said the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that schools violated the Constitution when they kept parents in the dark on such matters. Parents, it concluded, have a right to “direct the upbringing and education of their children” as they see fit. Most Americans no doubt are relieved by the majority’s common sense. But what does it say that these are the kinds of issues that often dominate our national discussions around K-12 education today?

Far too many children are still assigned to substandard schools, and too many remain unable to read or do math at grade level. Meanwhile, educators and policymakers seem preoccupied with nonsense like helping students “transition” behind their parents’ backs or indoctrinating impressionable youngsters with social-justice poppycock to promote trendy political causes. American kids are outperformed by their foreign peers on international exams while we have to concern ourselves with whether school libraries make sexually explicit texts available to third-graders.

For a growing number of people in charge of the public education establishment, making sure that boys can play on girls’ sports teams has become more important than making sure students are acquiring basic academic skills that will enable them to learn a trade, complete college, become productive adults.

One of the few bright spots in our education system has been selective-enrollment public high schools, which use standardized tests and other objective measures to determine admissions. Examples include Boston Latin School in Massachusetts, Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Va., all of which boast long and proven records of providing a rigorous education for students from all backgrounds. Yet even this successful model is increasingly under attack, and its future is uncertain.

A new study from the Manhattan Institute details efforts in Chicago to eliminate selective public high schools. Much of the Chicago public school system is in shambles. Wirepoints, a government watchdog group, reported last year that the Chicago Public School system operated 53 schools in 2024 where not a single student tested proficient in math, and 17 schools in which no student tested proficient in reading. Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democrats blame these outcomes on a lack of resources, but spending per pupil has almost doubled since 2017, and teacher pay in the Windy City is among the highest in the nation for large school districts after adjusting for cost of living.

The sensible path forward in Chicago would be to change or close the schools that are underperforming, but Mr. Johnson and his fellow progressives are far more interested in targeting the selective-enrollment school model. Chicago operates under a “choice” system, which means students aren’t required to attend a school based on their ZIP Code and can apply to schools with open seats in other neighborhoods, including selective-enrollment schools.

In 2023, 76% of Chicago high-school students chose to attend a school other than the one assigned to them, but if teachers unions and other opponents of school choice get their way, this option will end. Resource allocation in the public school system is based in part on enrollment. Mr. Johnson, a former union official, and his allies want to force students to attend their assigned schools, which will help prop up failing schools and protect their union jobs. By design, it might also result in the closure of selective-enrollment schools that admit students from all over the city. School board elections in November could determine the future of Chicago’s choice system.

Critics of selective public schools claim that they serve too few minority students, divert resources from traditional schools, and exacerbate racial and economic achievement gaps. Yet the Manhattan Institute’s assessment found that at least a third of the students at selective high schools in Chicago come from low-income families, and Chicago Public Schools spend thousands more per student on nonselective schools.

Almost “70% of all students at selective enrollment schools are black and Hispanic,” according to the study’s author, Renu Mukherjee. And the “black-white, Hispanic-white, and low-income-non-low-income achievement gaps” in math and English test scores “are, on average, significantly smaller at the city’s eight top selective enrollment high schools than at CPS overall.”

We should be replicating successful school-choice models, not thwarting them. When will concern about the educational advancement of all kids reach the level of concern for their preferred pronouns?

Links - 3rd March 2026 (2 - Schools in the US)

Meme - 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠 @HarmfulOpinion: "In 1979, the percentage of people ages 14 and older who were illiterate, was less than one percent. Today, it’s upwards of 16%. And 19% of high school graduates in the US can't read.   This is what 45 years of government education has given us."
The Democrats: "45 years ago today the Department of Education was created. Trump and Vance's Project 2025 will eliminate it."
Clearly, the problem is not enough money!

Meme - Mike The Mad Scientist @MadMikeOfficial: "When you’re trying to save the department of education but accidentally make the best case for eliminating it."
mony @moneycaa: "oh btw middle schoolers can't read, high schoolers can't write a proper essay, college students can't differentiate a scholarly based article vs propaganda, and adults cant tell when a picture is AI but sure, get rid the dept. of education LOL"

Rhyen Staley on X - "The Biden Department of Education gave Philly schools roughly $4m for restorative justice programming. One of the “project advisors” was Angela Davis’ sister, who runs a RJ nonprofit. She also helped create Oakland Unified’s RJ program feature RJ circles on “white privilege.”"

Meme - "If talking bout sex at work is harassment but talking to kids at school bout sex is ok that's when u know shit ant ok" *Professor X using telepathy*

Meme - Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "This is the former deputy attorney general of California and an influential voice in education, saying that if your child is stuck doing work below their ability, then you must be a Tech Bro and your child’s learning needs don’t matter"
Andrew Bunner @andrewbunner: "Our district is as Niels describes. Our daughter got in trouble for working on her outside-school advanced math during class even though she finished the worksheet they were assigned."
Niels Hoven @NielsHoven: "the audacity of a student! to try to learn something while in school"
Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley: "It's so weird how this keeps happening to the children of the Tech Bro community. Will no one speak for them?"

wanye on X - "I don’t think you have to read statements like this and pretend that you can’t tell that he thinks some constituencies are more important than others. I think you’re allowed to draw the obvious conclusion. This is what progressives would in other contexts describe as a, “dog whistle” and they would encourage you to derive from it a host of things this person likely believes about the group the statement is applied to. I think you’re totally allowed to do that here, too."

Chicago Teachers Union president claims standardized testing 'rooted in White supremacy' - "The president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) earlier this month called standardized testing a “junk science rooted in White supremacy."  Stacy Davis Gates said in an Aug. 5 interview with the Chicago-based radio station WVON that the exams originate from the early-20th century eugenics movement, which centered around the belief that segregation and social exclusion would rid society of people thought to be inferior... A 2023 report from the Illinois State Board of Education found that roughly 26% of Chicago Public Schools students met or exceeded their English language arts performance level, while only 17.5% did so for math. In February, though, a study by Harvard and Stanford researchers determined that the city’s students in grades 3-8 ranked third in reading growth among the 100 largest school districts from 2019 to 2023. The CTU has pushed Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to increase funding for the classrooms, claiming that doing so would protect progress made in the district."
Hide the metrics and always demand more money

Meme - "Figure 1: Time high school students spend on homework by race and parent's income
*most by Asians, then Whites, then Hispanics, then Blacks. More by non-low income than low income*"
Weird. We keep being told that homework is useless

Meme - Frank DeScushin @FrankDeScushin: "A Texas cheating scandal led to 200 unqualified teachers in the classroom, at least two of whom were sexual predators.  How the scheme worked:  Prospective teachers worried they couldn't pass Texas' certification test paid the pictured man, Vincent Grayson, $2500 to have someone take the test for them. Grayson then gave 20% to certifying official, Tywana Gilford Mason, to allow the racket, and Nicholas Newton, assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, took the test for unqualified candidates.  Grayson pocketed over a million dollars in the scheme.  In New America, noticing a pattern in these scandals where teachers and school administrators collude for fraudulent certification or to change students' grades is often treated as bad as the scandals themselves."
"200 TEACHERS CAUGHT: CHEATING SCANDAL. Who's Been Charged: Vincent Grayson, 57: Head boys basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston ISD, Grayson is accused of organizing the scheme. 'Tywana Gilford Mason, 51: Former director and certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center, Mason allegedly helped conceal the proxy scheme as a test proctor. Nicholas Newton, 35: Assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, Newton reportedly acted as a proxy test-taker in the cheating ring. Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22: Proctor at TACTIX, Wilhite is accused of taking bribes to allow proxy testing. LaShonda Roberts, gp: Assistant principal at Yates High School, Roberts is alleged to have recruited nearly 100 teachers to participate in the scheme."

Meme - pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism: "hey guys guess what ?  Mr. “more kids need to have their lives ruined” works for the Department of Child Services in Florida and is a former substitute teacher for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. 🌞"
joeycon @seasalt_bae: "Actually more kids need to have their lives ruined for not taking bigotry and discrimination seriously and genuinely believing that they're untouchable or the world will never hold them accountable for their actions"
ryan @scubaryan_: "this little girl was being racist and instantly regretted it when she found out he was livesteaming"

Meme - Wesley Yang @wesyang: "The sex education NGO the Future of Sex Education Initiative explains:  “not only are younger children able to discuss sexuality-related issues but that the early grades may, in fact, be the best time to introduce topics related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, gender equality, and social justice related to the LGBTQ community before hetero- and cisnormative values and assumptions become more deeply ingrained and less mutable.”"
Nicki Neily @nickineily: "Why are kindergarteners — who are 6 years old — being forced to learn about “gender identity” and why can’t their parents opt them out?"
"Parents in Massachusetts School District Can't Opt Out of 'Sexuality,' 'Gender Identity' Lessons"

Oregon school principal charged with felonies amid allegations she covered up child sex abuse scandal - "The principal St. Helens school in Oregon has surrendered to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office on felony criminal charges amid a damning child sex abuse scandal. Dr. Kathryn "Katy" Wagner, 45, was booked into Columbia County Jail... Wagner, the principal of St. Helens High School, was indicted Tuesday by a Columbia County grand jury on two counts of felony first-degree criminal mistreatment, two counts of first-degree official misconduct, and two counts of second-degree official misconduct, court documents show. She has been accused of failing to disclose child sex abuse allegations and intentionally withholding essential and adequate physical care from the minor student victims, detectives with the St. Helens Police Department said following a lengthy investigation.  The school district placed Wagner on administrative leave on Nov. 15, along with district superintendent Scott Stickwell. The principal's arrest follows a two-month probe into a history of minor sex abuse complaints at St. Helens High School. Under Oregon's mandatory reporter law, public officials and civil servants are required to report minor sex abuse allegations to law enforcement, which Wagner reportedly refused to do."
Time to bash the Catholic Church for covering up child sexual abuse again!

Libs of TikTok on X - "Meet Andrew Stewart, a teacher at @WestBroadwayMS in Rhode Island. After threatening to attack a store owner with a wooden board, Andrew destroyed a Trump sign while wearing a "Proud Trans Teacher" shirt. Parents, these are the kinds of teachers "educating" your kids."

Crémieux on X - "I just learned the OECD had a conference around the release of the latest round of PISA scores.  Everyone was giving presentations, talking about reforms and whatnot, and then someone showed my graphs showing America performs well when split by race.  They paused the conference.
They came back and banned the topic.  But then, it was all anyone talked about."

Scarlett Johnson on X - "A white child with dyslexia is denied essential reading intervention due to the Wisconsin State Superintendent and Green Bay Area Public School Administration prioritizing identity politics over the needs of children. CRT hurts our kids."
Frank DeScushin on X - "If a school states they prioritize resources to non-white students and then denies resources to a white student, the legal burden shouldn’t be on the student to prove discrimination. It should be on the school to prove they didn’t act in accord with their discriminatory policy."
Mother claims Wisconsin school discriminated against her white dyslexic son - "A Wisconsin school board has launched an internal investigation after a mother claimed her son was denied access to additional reading resources because he is white.  Colbey Decker has accused Green Bay Area School District of discriminating against her dyslexic, elementary school-aged son by prioritising racial minority pupils for access to specialist educational services.  In a letter threatening legal action against the school board, Ms Decker said last week that her son was denied entry to the school district’s literacy programme for almost a full year because he was not a racial minority.  “The school implied to me that my child would already be receiving one-on-one reading support if he were black, Hispanic, or First Nation,” she said.  “I was speechless. I think we need to help every student in need, and using the guise of ‘diversity’ simply creates more division and hurts all students.”... According to an excerpt from what appears to be a school success plan for Green Bay’s King Elementary School, seen by The Telegraph, one of the “high priority strategies” for literacy is “prioritising additional resources to First Nations, Black, and Hispanic students”."

Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” on X - "The largest SEL conference in the country. A few sessions:
- "Exemplary white teachers"
- "Gender inclusive schools"
- "Climate change and SEL"
- Using SEL to advance social justice
SEL has just become a trojan horse for boilerplate progressivism in the classroom"

Thread by @Erin4Parents on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "As Colorado legislators continue to pass laws to be LESS transparent (and even “republicans” like @SoperMatthew and Janice Rich sign onto them) — It’s time to talk about WHY government transparency is necessary.  I’ll start…
In 2021, my little girl was sexualized, groomed and transitioned to a boy in her 6th grade classroom. Then the district ignored me, tried to justify it, LIED to me, and had unthinkable conversations about my family & child & how I must be abusive and deserve a CPS visit because I disagreed with what they did.  It was only because of exercising my right to public records that I was able to see their true intentions, actions, and agenda.  Here are some examples of the things I discovered through public record that no one EVER would have known that my lying, scheming school district was doing:
The school board president colluded with my child’s abuser (an outside party who runs “Skittles” and splashnoco.org ) to keep me *quiet* … referring to parents who find out as “barriers” that the school board has removed at other middle schools and claiming we have no rights. *Here’s a visual of the 2 people scheming against my family behind closed doors in this email — 3 days after they hurt my child. Here they are discussing sending a mandated reporter to my home for a “well-child check” because I removed my girl from their abusive environment. (And yes, they did send someone to my home.)  They high 5 each other for being “allies” — for their brave, admirable, hard (but rewarding) work undermining parents & sexualizing little kids. Here I discovered that someone else was invited in to groom and sexualize my daughter …. A self-proclaimed “genderqueer shapeshifting blood witch” who plays in her own blood, mutilates her own body, and publicly writes about her experiences in Aleister Crowley sex dungeons.  Her names Charlie, but she now goes by “Silen Wellington” ((Read full story on her here: theepochtimes.com/us/after-scand… )) Oh! And here is the invite for my child (and other 11 & 12-year-olds) to secretly connect with her skittles/splash groomer and the shapeshifting witch PRIVATELY on Discord (after “friending” them and agreeing to the confidentiality “rules” of course.)  When I went public — Here is the district’s lgbtqia+ coordinator checking in on the teacher: saying it must be so hard to face backlash for supporting her students!  And the teacher saying she “feels awful” for my daughter having to experience this (THIS meaning her mother publicly standing up against the harm they caused her.)  Public records show that the teachers were *celebrated* and *supported* for harming my child and others.  Meanwhile, the district had waged a public campaign to discredit and smear me: the mom whose child they hurt and then refused to take accountability for it when I tried for nearly a year to handle it privately.
Here are my child’s abuser Art teacher & school counselor many months AFTER WE RAISED CONCERN still bragging about their GSA “art club” and inviting collaboration from the genderqueer shapeshifting blood witch in their secret gender & sexuality meetings in the classroom.  Here is the witch being invited to privately meet off site with a student to help “decrease their barriers”. Here is a middle school counselor scheming with district LGBTQ lady about keeping SECRET lists of kids’ names & pronouns at school (with a column for how to lie to their parents when communicating home.)  They make sure to vilify parents & double-down on the secrecy policy.
Just for fun, here’s another crazy story about my school distirct’s deceit and lies by the Fox News— Again, I found these emails of them transitioning an ELEMENTARY student even after parents found out and said STOP IT.  The principal learned from the *shapeshifting witch* in district staff training that rights lie with children, not parents. And then the district’s legal department even confirmed this policy & practice of lying to parents.  foxnews.com/media/elementa…
Again, this was ALL intentionally done in secret: the club, the communications, the attack on my family and others.  Without CORA law, I would not have known about any of this. No one would.  And now former PSD school board member Cathy Kipp is trying to run this anti-transparency law again.  Why? Because they don’t like it when parents like me expose their own behavior in their own words.  They want to keep us in the dark and silence us while they trample our rights and violate our children.  Don’t let them. #Fight4CORA"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "43 percent of all students in DC public schools were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year."
Damn racism keeping minority students behind!

Libs of TikTok on X - "Teacher shows off a “social justice” day in her school. Students spend an entire day learning about "banned books", climate change, LGBTQ rights, resistance, and protesting. This school would be stripped of their funding under Trump's new Executive Order."

Buck Sexton on X - "Had a teacher friend years ago who was assigned to a special program public school in a rough nyc area. Straightforward idea- flood this one school with top teachers and ample resources-then the low-income kids in it will excel. Replicate it elsewhere. She said the classrooms had brand new Mac computers, iPads, All the bells and whistles. Plus low student-teacher ratio.   But nothing changed for the kids, scores or behavior issues, over years and years while she was there. Why?   Well, she said out of 30 kids, maybe 3 would have parents show up for parent teacher conference day- often a grandparent. Without parental support, fostering a culture of learning, it won’t get better.   You’ll never hear the truth from Randi W. and the rest of the Ed cartel though. They don’t care about the kids, only “more resources” (taxpayer dollars) for adults."
Clearly, they didn't spend enough money and schools are underfunded

Meme - "Americans: why do police unions protect bad cops and keep them employed?
Teachers unions:"

Connecticut high school graduate alleges she can’t read or write in lawsuit - "Aleysha Ortiz is 19 years old and dreams of one day writing stories and maybe even a book. That may sound like a reasonable aspiration for a teenager recently out of high school, but for Aleysha it will be much harder.  Despite graduating last June from Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut, and earning a scholarship to college, Aleysha is illiterate. She says she cannot read or write... She graduated with honors, which usually means a student has demonstrated academic excellence. But after 12 years of attending public schools in Hartford, Aleysha testified at a May 2024 city council meeting that she could not read or write. Suddenly, she says, school officials seemed concerned about awarding her a diploma.   Two days before graduation, she says, school district officials told her she could defer accepting the diploma in exchange for intensive services. Aleysha didn’t listen.  “I decided, they (the school) had 12 years,” she says. “Now it’s my time.”  Aleysha is now suing the Hartford Board of Education and the City of Hartford for negligence, as well as her special education case manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligent infliction of emotional distress."
If they hadn't let her graduate, she'd have sued for discrimination

Arjun Panickssery on X - "Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now The "Mississippi Miracle" started in 2012 when the Republican governor/legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test"
Arpit Gupta on X - "Phonics — teaching kids to sound words out — is a better method for earning to read, but offers less autonomy to teachers who often don't like it MS first passed a law mandating phonics, and saw reading scores go up a lot. Many, but not all states, followed"
𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 on X - "I like how there’s no way to defend teachers’ irrational dislike for phonics. It’s just entirely baseless and evil. It reflects so poorly on them both as a profession and individually. It’d be like if firefighters refused to use water, and literally couldn’t explain why."
Trust the Experts!

Thread by @panickssery on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now.  The "Mississippi Miracle" started in 2012 when the Republican governor/legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test. In contrast, Oregon, with the lowest demographic-adjusted scores, has a Board of Education that has indefinitely "paused" since 2020 the use of any standardized test as a graduation requirement.  Most of this stuff isn't rocket science"
I saw a left winger claim that Mississippi improved because of throwing more money at the problem. Time to mock red states and praise blue ones

Nicholas Kristof on X - "It's astonishing to witness the improvement in public education--reading, math, attendance, grad rates--in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. But we're busy fighting culture wars rather than scaling up what these three states have done. Please do read:"
Daniel Friedman on X - "The reason this is happening is that conservative states use academic tracking and remove behavior problems from the classroom. Having a few chronically absent behavior problems who are years behind grade level in a classroom slows everyone’s progress.  Schools eliminated disciplinary punishment, academic failure and tracked classes because the students removed from the classroom by these policies were disproportionately black.  But the students whose education is derailed when you keep all these problems in the classroom are also black."

The Push for Phonics-Based Reading Instruction in Schools | TIME - "As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”  The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says."
Madame Fragonard on X - "k-12 education now attracts narcissistic wannabe creative types who think they’re too good for normal jobs the end result is that they’ve bullied their way into constructing a curriculum solely concerned with providing an aesthetically gratifying experience for the teachers"
This explains why US teachers keep complaining. School is not primarily about educating students
Progressive teaching is about sabotaging your students' skills. Maybe so when they fail in life, they will be radicalised into being left wingers

Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "Why would educators be opposed to teaching kids to sound out words? Well, the faculty at Minnesota State's college of education object to the "promotion of teaching methods developed [...] during the Jim Crow era""
Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "There are so many domains in which a racial justice framing has been used as a shortcut to getting whatever unrelated thing progressives want, because arguing against racial justice was impossible. This problem continues unabated."

Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "We have illiterate teenagers because schools tell kids to guess at words instead of sounding them out"
James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "Sooner or later, we need to reckon with the fact that once the Critical Pedagogues took over education schools (arguably by the 90s, certainly by the early 2000s), they started breaking education completely.  The failures they generate are then fed back into the system to provide further justifications for their broken and traumatizing methods, like "Social-Emotional Learning" to help kids deal with the frustrations of failing to learn.  Because government (the Department of Education under Bush 43, in this case) decided that what education needed more than anything were measuring sticks placed everywhere, their accountability approaches became tools by which the Critical Pedagogues could tie money to their broken and damaging methods.  What we see here is teaching normal children to read using a technique designed to help dyslexic kids bridge the gap because phonics often doesn't work well with dyslexia. Now every kid has to learn this way, which will get them recognized as struggling, which will justify more money and special budgets for the learning challenges under this whole broken grift.  Worst of all, the teachers themselves are put into a position where they think they're genuinely expressing care and concern for kids who they think need special attention when in fact what they need are the old reliable methods that work with most kids without frustrating them.  I hear from teachers all the time who try to explain to me why Social-Emotional Learning is so important with all these kids who are struggling, and they ask rhetorical questions like, "what are we supposed to do, just not care about these kids?"  The answer is that they need to get off the treadmill of broken methods, but they can't. They don't know other methods, the funding and administration demand these methods, and the crisis of broken kids is right in front of them."

Links - 24th February 2026 (2 - Schools in the US)

Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Poll finds that 90% of whites support Brown v Board of Education, which famously banned segregation in schools.   That's higher than the 80% of blacks who support the decision.  The question explained what the case was about, so they weren't confused by this."

Richard Hanania on X - "68% of Americans say more should be done to integrate blacks and whites in school. 26% say less. Of course, no one stops whites from moving their children into black schools but they don't. This is the difference between stated (politics) and revealed preferences (markets)."

Mom Is Pulling Her 1st Grader Out Of School Because She Refuses To Sign A Homework Paper - "One mom decided to “unschool” her child after not signing her son’s homework paper, which resulted in him not receiving a reward... Rhae explained up front that she is “not a homework mom.” So, when her son presented her with a piece of paper she had to sign and date as confirmation that he did his homework, she wasn’t having any of it.  “I have four kids, and I run a massive business through social media,” she said. “I don’t have time.”  Rhae’s son explained to her that he would not receive a reward, known as a “fuzzy,” if he didn’t turn this piece of paper in. But she was adamant. “You’re not going to get punished for something I’m not doing,” she said.  Eventually, Rhae’s son told her that everyone else in his class had five fuzzies, except for him; he only had one. Rhae felt that her son was being “targeted” and insisted he be moved to another classroom until the end of the year."

The Systemic Racism Canard's Consequences - "Black and Hispanic students have markedly higher suspension and expulsion rates than whites and Asians. The Obama administration determined that these disparities needed to be remedied. Rather than address the possibility that the higher rates of suspensions and expulsions weren’t due to systemic racism but to the fact that blacks and Hispanics engaged in misconduct meriting such discipline at a higher rate than whites and Asians (e.g., in 2015, 12.6 percent of blacks engaged in a physical fight on school property versus 5.6 percent of white students), the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education and the Civil-Rights Division of the Department of Justice issued a guidance that, among other things, triggered federal investigations of schools whose suspension/expulsion rates differed materially by race. Such investigations can be extremely expensive and time-consuming for schools. So, quite magically, the year after the guidance was issued, the suspension/expulsion disparities disappeared; i.e., black and Hispanic students who engaged in behavior that previously would’ve resulted in suspension or expulsion remained in class. For anyone with a grain of common sense, the results were predictable. Teachers who testified on the matter before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported classrooms out of control, even teachers being severely beaten. There also was a marked increase in the number of students who reported being bullied and a significant decrease in the number of students who felt safe on school grounds (resulting in an increase in the number of students who reported not attending school at least once in the preceding 30 days due to fear of violence). Vandalism, graffiti, and disruptive classroom behaviors rose as well. Overall academic performance declined when schools banned out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. Those disproportionately affected by the chaos were black students who wished to learn.   The “systemic racism” canard is a prescription for public-policy disasters in areas ranging from criminal justice to education to economic policy. Unfortunately, it’s a rhetorically powerful and politically useful tool. So media, academia, politicians, and woke corporations will continue to repeat it to the detriment of minorities in particular, and America as a whole."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In states like California and Virginia, some school districts have launched so-called "antiracist equitable grading" initiatives to decrease the number of D and F grades given to blacks and Hispanics."
If a black or hispanic student doesn't do the exam and you fail him, that's racist. Left wingers want equal outcomes regardless of merit or effort

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In recent years, researchers have found that around two-thirds of differences in school achievement can be explained by differences in children's genes.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797613486982…  Three years ago, the official California state task force assigned to come up with a new "antiracist" math curriculum for public schools stated that it rejected the idea of innate talent and ability.   Leftwing science denial almost always boils down to rejection of any scientific findings that threaten sacred equalitarian beliefs relating to race and sex."
Clearly, more funding is the solution

Literacy and Numeracy Are More Heritable Than Intelligence in Primary School - "Because literacy and numeracy are the focus of teaching in schools, whereas general cognitive ability (g, intelligence) is not, it would be reasonable to expect that literacy and numeracy are less heritable than g. Here, we directly compare heritabilities of multiple measures of literacy, numeracy, and g in a United Kingdom sample of 7,500 pairs of twins assessed longitudinally at ages 7, 9, and 12. We show that differences between children are significantly and substantially more heritable for literacy and numeracy than for g at ages 7 and 9, but not 12. We suggest that the reason for this counterintuitive result is that universal education in the early school years reduces environmental disparities so that individual differences that remain are to a greater extent due to genetic differences. In contrast, the heritability of g increases during development as individuals select and create their own environments correlated with their genetic propensities."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "In 2020, the Los Angeles Unified School District described standing still in line and talking without raising one's hand as "white middle class norms" which black students should not be expected to comply with under the system's revised disciplinary policies."
"Some students of color receive undue or harsh punishment, (i.e.: office referrals or detention) for not demonstrating behaviors such as standing still in line, raising their hand, or the ability to monitor personal space in ways that are consistent with white middle class norms. This provides video provides an example of unconscious bias."

Meme - "I'm sure the teacher in this classroom is giving completely unbiased lessons to their students. Another ad for homeschooling"
"Look what my teacher put on the wall *pictures of American presidents with a clown face over an upside down Donald Trump*"
School indoctrination and teacher political bias is a far right conspiracy theory and misinformation

Thread by @johnkonrad on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "My wife is a teacher. Here’s excerpts from the special kids election edition of the @NYTimes being taught in some public schools this week. Editors note: grown-ups should not read this
Apparently Trump thinks everyone should be able to buy fully automatic grenade launchers. Trump grew up in Queens but no mention that Kamala grew up in Canada. Specifics on how Trump’s dad made money but none on what type of economics Harris’ Dad taught
The full candidate section:
Personally I won’t be encouraging my daughter to knock on doors during the most contentious election of my lifetime. But that’s just me. This part tracks with Harris’ previous statements that young adults make bad decisions. I have to agree with the NYTimes on this one. WWE stars are pretty cool. Apparently the electoral college is “weird”. More than weird:
Be sure to stay up late on a school night to hear what the MSM talking heads say about each candidate! 🤦‍♂️
“Because Trump refused to accept the results and claimed the election was ‘stolen’”  No mention of Bush v. Gore and the United States Supreme Court?
Advice on how to convince grandpa not to vote for Trump
Obligatory capital riot sidebar
Ok I’m sorry they do mention the 2000 election and Al Gore’s acceptance of the “finality” of the outcome
The big issues kids should focus on:
Health care
Gun violence
Public transit
Being nice
The environment
Taylor Swift is awesome! Ask a Senator!  All democrats with a single republican at the very end
The full edition for you to decide on your own"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "If systemic racism and white supremacy impede black academic success, why don't they also impede black success in sports or in the music industry? And why don't they seem to have any effect on Asian academic success (other than perhaps a positive one)?"

Austin Berg on X - "BREAKING: All seven members of the Chicago Board of Education have announced they will resign. This is unprecedented.   The move comes after weeks of heavy pressure from Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union, demanding board members do two things ⬇️
1. Issue a $300M payday loan to fund the union's contract demands.
2. Fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez for his refusal to support that loan.
So now what happens?  Johnson is expected to appoint seven CTU loyalists to the board in order to borrow the money to pay off the union. And fire Martinez.   All just a few weeks before elected school board members take office.  So rather than respecting the will of Chicago voters, Johnson is hot swapping the entire school board in order to give a massive, taxpayer-funded gift to his largest campaign donor (CTU).  This is what happens when a radical teachers union is on both sides of the bargaining table.   Early voting is now open in the Nov. 5 election for Chicago's school board. I encourage you to vote for an independent, reform candidate against a CTU-backed candidate. Our city depends on it.   Will drop the list of reform candidates below."

State of Illinois proposes to mandate racist books for all public school students - "Many of these books are simply too new to be considered essential reading. The Illinois General Assembly is attempting to mandate, by law, the literary canon. The establishment of a literary canon, books that are considered classics, that make their way onto must read lists, is not something that ought be done by an arm of the government. The push to indoctrinate students with anti-racist literature as a means to make them not racist has not been proved to be effective. This is especially concerning as much of what passes for anti-racist is primarily anti-white. In 2021 America, whiteness is an immutable condition that renders the afflicted person unable to overcome the biases that come from having lived their lives with a pale skin tone."
From 2021

Thread by @tracewoodgrains on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "learning the history of Philadelphia's most selective public school.  It was established as a middle school for advanced students. In 2021-2022, Philadelphia switched all schools to a unified lottery system, and the school's focus on excellence was systematically dismantled. With the change, the school (along with all other Philly schools) had no discretion over who to admit. Its pipeline was broken: students from the middle school no longer received even priority at the high school. Until 2020, it had an advanced math track for capable students. That track was eliminated due to diversity concerns. In 2022, school administration removed the school's mission statement (to focus on academically talented students for advanced intellectual study). When it resurfaced, language about the accelerated curriculum had disappeared. Even the school's seal changed:
Out with "Dare to be excellent."
In with, ah... "Middle & High School"
Why was the school's curriculum redesigned? Because school leadership did not want to "advantage" Masterman middle school students over other students who would be admitted to the high school. Admissions criteria for the middle school were relaxed dramatically. With that, unsurprisingly, the school's proportion of advanced students cratered. In 2011-2022, its fifth graders became nearly indistinguishable from fifth graders at other schools.
People who target top-performing public schools in the name of "equity" destroy it: while wealthy parents can flee to private schools, talented kids from poor families rely on free options. In the past few years, Philadelphia has chosen to undermine that. View full report here:
Note that the report is from early 2023. Currently checking which, if any, of its recommendations have been implemented for this year. Return to the idealism that built excellence-focused free schools; reject the perverse idealism that seeks to tear them down.  Pursue excellence."
Left wingers hate success and excellence

i/o on X - "The urban liberals of the 50s and 60s invested government resources in the creation of selective public schools in which bright lower-income kids could receive a quality of education rivaling private prep schools. Many of the alumni from these schools — almost all of which achieved their goal of becoming drivers of upward mobility — became leading figures in American culture, science, business, and academia.  But because admission to these schools was based upon performance on a cognitively-demanding test, the students were overwhelmingly white, and then later, by the 00s, were overwhelmingly Asian and white.  So by the time progressives took control of cities and school boards around the country in the mid-2010s, there was a conspicuous and ideologically lucrative target in their sites: Public schools where academic excellence reigned supreme, and where black and Hispanic students were barely in evidence.  At the heart of progressivism is a fear and contempt of individual excellence because this excellence is distributed so unequally among different groups."

TracingWoodgrains on X - "Iran can do it. Can we? "The organization recruits students annually through a two-step set of nationwide exams at both middle school and high school levels. The tests are designed to measure intelligence, talents and creativity rather than prior knowledge."
When you hate achievement and love failure, this isn't possible

Meme - Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "Education policymakers want to close gaps between high-achievers and low-achievers. Equal outcomes, not equal opportunity.  By supporting the learning needs of high-achieving kids, gifted programs increase that achievement gap, and so they are being dismantled nation-wide"
TracingWoodgrains @tracewoodgrains: "The project of education is, counterintuitively, fundamentally unequal. Everyone starts knowing nothing. As soon as you learn anything, "outcome inequality" increases.   Students at every level of knowledge and aptitude deserve chances to learn. That includes high achievers."
Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "The ultimate irony is that killing public gifted programs to reduce achievement gaps ensures that only wealthy families can access academic excellence  Underresourced kids get stuck in a system that doesn’t care about them, internalizing every day that their needs don’t matter"
Zarfam @farzamt: "I went to the NORDET school in Iran from 6th grade all the way through high school. Cannot imagine what life would have been like if I went to a normal school. I was bored all the way to 5th grade but after that, it was an amazing combination of students with crazy skills."
The left want to achieve equity by pulling the successful down

Despite massive funding, public schools continue to fail their students academically - "Schools have been failing for a long time, but the COVID shutdowns and the rise of radical ideologies within the classroom has accelerated the decline.  One of the examples drawing attention to how badly schools have failed students and parents is that of a Baltimore City high school student who reached his senior year having only passed three classes, meaning he will have to repeat all of his years of high school. The student’s mother claims she was never notified by the school of her son’s performance and that she believed since the school continued passing him to the next level that he was doing fine. While a district statement insists that the mother did know, that’s not what’s drawing headlines.  With a 0.13 GPA, the student ranked 62nd out of 120 students in his grade, meaning 58 other students actually fared worse. Even though he failed 22 classes, he continued to be moved along in his courses and grade level. He also was late or absent 272 times. With so many other students performing equally poor or worse, the school system was systematically passing most students on to the next grade without ensuring that they actually learned the material.".. Many education advocates and politicians claim that more money will solve this crisis, but more realistic observers note that the problem isn’t funding but failing and politically protected school systems and teachers’ unions. To back up their point, they cite the Education Stabilization Fund dollars appropriated to states to prevent lapses in education during the COVID lockdowns, when remote learning was necessary. The Federal government gave out over $200 billion to states in 2020, much of which remains unspent. For example, Illinois has spent less than $5.5 billion of the $10.5 billion it received, while Maryland has spent less than $2 billion of its close to $4.5 billion.  Critics also cite evidence showing that higher per pupil funding doesn’t translate to higher achievement. For example, Illinois is eighth in the nation in per pupil spending and all it has to show for it are the aforementioned paltry scores. A 2016 NAEP report showed no correlation between increases in spending and test improvements from 2003-2015. That report isn’t alone... Illinois currently spends more on pensions for adults than everything else combined in K-12 education. Illinois public schools have increased spending per student by 199 percent since 1970 and a majority of students are not being educated, while Chicago Public Schools spends over $27,000 per student per year.  “Give that money directly to families, so they can find alternatives,” he demanded. “Only then will schools have real incentives to cater to the needs of students and families as opposed to the other way around.” As we have stated before, government schools aren’t failing. They’ve already failed. Completely. There is simply no other conclusion any rational person could make at this point. Our current public education system is too beholden to the demands of teachers’ unions and political activists. It’s no longer educating, children are suffering, and parents are noticing.  A large majority of parents now say they favor school choice, and as the state of Arizona has shown, such a program not only provides benefits for students who leave public schools but also helps students who remain because public school administrators then have no choice but to try and up their game. School choice also costs taxpayers far less than public schools.  The oft-used phrase that calls for education departments to “fund students instead of systems” is apt as it allows even the poorest of families to decide where and how to spend educational dollars instead of throwing money into incompetent systems. Government’s way of dealing with any problem is always to spend more money, but spending more money has not fixed this problem. In fact, it’s made it worse and more corrupt."
Clearly, the problem is insufficient money

Meme - Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist @DeAngelisCorey: "The government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids."
"Growth in Administrative Staff, Principals, Teachers, and Students in Public Schools
+95% Principals Administrative Staff
+39% Principals and Teachers
+10% Teachers
+5% Students"

Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist on X - "Los Angeles public schools have lost 26% of their students since 2014. Yet they've increased staffing by 19%. The government school system is a jobs program for adults."

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Massachusetts residents who go to vote this November are going to see a curious ballot initiative:  Repeal Competence Assessment Requirement for High School Graduation.  The initiative is being championed by Progressives opposed to standardized tests.  Let's discuss🧵
Firstly, who's sponsoring this initiative?  The officials are @SenWarren @RepMcGovern @AyannaPressley @RepLoriTrahan and @JimHawkins4Rep.  The unions are the MA AFL-CIO and the Teachers Association.  The organizations are MassVote and Progressive Massachusetts. And what are their reasons?  The official website says having a high-stakes test as a graduation requirement is "ineffective" and "discriminatory". Discriminatory against whom?  (1) Non-Whites, (2) people who don't know English, and (3) people with learning disabilities.
The issue, as written by Lori Trahan, is that some students have fine grades and attendance, but they can't pass a test.  In frank terms, the proponents of getting rid of this initiative want shakier, more subjective graduation standards because objective ones feel bad.
But the vast majority of students pass this examination, if not on their first try, then on subsequent attempts  On a first go, 88% of the class of 2023, 81% of the class of 2024, and 82% of the class of 2025 passed.  And it's no wonder, because the test is easy. On the English Language Arts section, you have to read paragraphs and then answer questions about them.  You are literally given the answer and told to mark it down. In 2024, this meant reading a portion of Song of the Open Read and then answering questions like:
An example essay question from this section is to write a few paragraphs about some essays on listening skills, in which you argue that listening skills are important.  You should really be able to do this after reading two whole essays on the topic. The mathematics section is even easier. For example, you can just plug-and-play with arithmetic sequences:   The mathematics section hits students with questions like 'Here's a list of ten magazine prices. What's the range of prices?' or 'What's the median price?' or 'If you remove two magazines and the median is unchanged but the average goes up by $1, what might their prices be?' In other words, the test is not hard.
In recent years, they've added a science and technology/engineering section that asks you about biology and physics.  The biology section asks if you paid attention in class. You may not believe this, but the physics section asks the same thing: Did you pay attention to the basics in class?
Since more than 80% of kids pass this test, and the state IQ of Massachusetts averages 104, the mean IQ for people who fail the test will be about 91 if the standard deviation is 15.  But some groups, like English Language Learners, will make this calculation erroneous. The real IQ threshold for passing, as a result, is a bit higher than 91. No big deal though, because that's still quite low.  The idea that this is a major barrier to kids' graduation should be regarded as pretty insulting to them.
Does this disadvantage "students of color"?  If that means Black people, then not really. They do about 0.7-0.8 d (0.76 in 2023, 0.78 in 2024) worse than Whites.  If Asians, then they do better than Whites, by (0.20 and 0.11 d in those years). It might be the case that Hispanics are disadvantaged unfairly by not knowing English, because they perform a bit worse than Blacks, and that is generally only observed with really selective samples or a language issue. But the solution to students not knowing English is not to get rid of the test entirely, it is to provide them with a translated test or a nonverbal test!  Incidentally, the state has produced translated questions in recent years, so this really isn't an issue.
Who opposes the initiative?  The governor, @MassGovernor, the Secretary of Education, @PatrickTutwiler, the former Secretary of Education, @JimPeyser, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Mass. Assoc. of School Superintendents, the Business Alliance for Education, and more. The opposition cites as its reasoning that, empirically, the scores on the test predict long-term success and they adequately measure students' academic skills rather than their socioeconomic backgrounds or school characteristics, unlike measures like GPAs and attendance. Other opponents argue, cogently, that getting rid of standards for the whole state means acquiring subjective standards that vary substantially across it, and do not actually work for ensuring student success. They also argue that teaching to the test is a myth and students should not earn diplomas if they aren't actually prepared.
Frankly, opposition to testing means opposition to gifted kids who might not come from a good background, who might not be able to attend school regularly, and who might be able to show they're ready for the wider world, but not through teachers' subjective measurements. This initiative to strip Massachusetts schools of rigorous graduation standards and appropriate standards for using the only tool they currently have to identify the underserved is going to hurt a lot of kids if it's passed, just as it does everywhere this happens. The only real benefit of getting rid of test-based graduation requirements is going to accrue to those who think everyone should graduate regardless of whether they deserve to.  They value equality for its own sake, and that's easily achieved, at a high price."

Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them

Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them

"In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room — a prized single in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford.

I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year.

That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her “a disability accommodation”.

She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as “disabled”. 

Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.

A recent article in The Atlantic reported that an increasing number of students at elite universities were claiming they had disabilities to get benefits or exemptions, which can also include copies of lecture notes, excused absences and access to private testing rooms. Those who suffer from “social anxiety” can even get out of participating in class discussions. 

But the most common disability accommodation students ask for — and receive — is the best housing on campus.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where competition for the best dorm rooms is fierce, this practice is particularly rife. The Atlantic reported that 38 percent of undergraduates at my college were registered as having a disability — that’s 2,850 students out of a class of 7,500 — and 24 per cent of undergrads received academic or housing accommodations in the fall quarter. 

At the Ivy League colleges Brown and Harvard, more than 20 per cent of undergrads are registered as disabled. Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations. Bizarrely, the schools that boast the most academically successful students are the ones with the largest number who claim disabilities — disabilities that you’d think would deter academic success.

The truth is, the system is there to be gamed, and most students feel that if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage...

When I arrived on campus two and a half years ago, I would have assumed that special allowances were made for a small number of students who genuinely needed them. But I quickly discovered that wasn’t true. Some diagnoses are real and serious, of course, such as epilepsy, anaphylactic allergies, sleep apnea or severe physical disabilities. 

But most students, in my experience, claim less severe ailments, such as ADHD or anxiety. And some “disabilities” are just downright silly. Students claim “night terrors”; others say they “get easily distracted” or they “can’t live with others”. I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant...

The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students. 

As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for.

In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little scepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.

While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system. Take Callie, a recent Stanford grad with ADHD and Asperger’s who agreed to be quoted under a pseudonym. Callie was diagnosed with her conditions in elementary school; in return, Stanford granted her a single room for all four years, plus extra time on tests — and a few more perks. 

“In college, I haven’t had that many ‘in real life’ tests as opposed to take-home essays,” Callie told me. “When I did use the extra time, I felt guilty, because I probably didn’t deserve the accommodations, given the fact I got into Stanford and could compete at a high academic level. Extra time on tests — some students even get double time — seems unfair to me.”

But at Stanford, almost no one talks about the system with shame. Rather, we openly discuss, strategise and even joke about it. At a university of savvy optimisers, the feeling is that if you aren’t getting accommodations, you haven’t tried hard enough.

Another student told me that special “accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest”. Academic accommodations, they added, help “students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground”.

The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate. 

And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures — including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from “mushroom mix”.

Administrators seem powerless to reform the system and frankly don’t seem to care. How do you prove someone doesn’t have anxiety? How do you verify they don’t need extra time on a test? How do you challenge a religious dietary claim without risking a discrimination lawsuit?

I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"                     

Clearly, overdiagnosis is never a problem - only underdiagnosis, and we need even more "awareness" about mental health. Almost no one abuses the system and if you suggest that many do, you are a horrible person, a terrible human being who lacks "empathy".

When Anti-Racism Training Becomes ‘Vexatious’ Abuse

Once again, the anti-"hate" people are incredibly hateful. From 2024:

When Anti-Racism Training Becomes ‘Vexatious’ Abuse

"Richard Bilkszto (1963–2023) grew up in southwestern Ontario, the son of Polish-Canadian fruit farmers. His first job was in real estate. And he might have continued down that professional path had his best friend’s father not convinced him to try his hand at teaching, having (correctly) predicted that Bilkszto would be a natural fit in the classroom.

After attending teachers’ college in upstate New York, Bilkszto eventually found his way back to Canada. For the last three decades of his career, the soft-spoken educator worked for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), at first as a classroom instructor, and then as a vice-principal and principal.

Bilkszto’s professional philosophy was shaped by an early stint at an inner-city school in Buffalo, NY. There, he observed how a skilled and attentive educator could positively transform the lives of underprivileged children. Unfortunately, he also witnessed examples—including some in Canada, later in his career—that showed how racism and other forms of prejudice could alienate a troubled child from schooling altogether...

As a gay man who’d come of age when homophobia was still common, Bilkszto had a finely tuned antenna for bigotry. And he began gravitating toward liberal causes early in life. Before moving to Toronto in the 1990s, Bilkszto served as a riding-association president for the youth wing of Canada’s left-leaning Liberal Party, and attended several of its national conventions. Bilkszto was proud of his country, in large part because he believed its political culture was tolerant and enlightened.

Ironically, it was this appreciation of Canada’s progressive nature that caused him to be smeared as a bigot during the last chapter of his career—a trauma that haunted him until his death.

As widely reported in mid-2023, two years after the fact, Bilkszto had been humiliated in front of dozens of his fellow TDSB administrators during a pair of online professional-development training sessions. These seminars, conducted in late April and early May 2021, were led by Kike Ojo-Thompson, a self-described “equity thought leader [who] is renowned for her work and expertise as an anti-racism and anti-Black racism educator.”

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training had been proving quite lucrative for Ojo-Thompson. TDSB documents indicate that she was paid $81,000 for this round of seminars alone. Her work with the TDSB and the nearby Peel District School Board (PDSB) earned her more than $300,000 during the pandemic—largely, it seems, in return for presenting variations on the same four-part presentation series that Bilkszto attended three years ago. And these were but two of the many Ontario school boards that contracted with Ojo-Thompson’s self-operated company, the KOJO Institute.

In an academic thesis published in 1999, Ojo-Thompson described herself as the daughter of a Trinidadian-born mother well-steeped in her country’s traditional Caribbean culture; and of a Nigerian-born father passionately committed to anti-racism, a cause that Ojo-Thompson herself eagerly took up while still in high school...

While Ojo-Thompson once worked briefly as a teacher for the PDSB, whose territory covers exurban municipalities west of Toronto, most of her career has been connected in some way with what would now be called DEI. From 2006 to 2014, she worked for Peel Children’s Aid in a position described as “Senior Manager, Diversity & Anti-Oppression.” Following that, she was employed by the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, with a focus on promoting the equitable treatment of black families.

In her DEI consulting work, Ojo-Thompson came to exhibit an unusually aggressive rhetorical style, peppered with sweeping indictments of Canada as a virulently racist society that’s urgently in need of “disruption.” Her theories concerning education—and society more generally—seem rooted in the psychological constructs she described in her 1999 thesis, which cast traditional black societies as kind and welcoming, in contrast to western societies such as Canada, which she views as being contaminated by unrelenting racial hatred, due to a malignant (though ill-defined) quality that Ojo-Thompson identifies as “whiteness.” 

And yet Bilkszto, while indeed white, hardly seems to have been a natural foil for Ojo-Thompson.

By 2021, he’d retired from his TDSB role as a full-time school principal, but continued to fill in at schools that had temporary job vacancies...

But Bilkszto’s attitude changed when he heard Ojo-Thompson repeatedly describe Canada as a bastion of “white supremacy”—a description at odds with his own experience and observations. When she launched into further claims that Canada’s culture of white supremacism was even more poisonous than that of the United States, he felt compelled to speak up during the Q&A that followed the instructor’s prepared remarks.  

In his brief comments, Bilkszto referred to Canada’s thicker social safety net, its more generous funding of public schools, as well as the impressions that he’d gained while working with at-risk children on both sides of the border. “We’re a far more just society,” he concluded.

It was a point that most Canadians, and possibly even Americans, would regard as not only uncontroversial but obvious. Yet, as the subsequently released recording of the session indicates, Ojo-Thompson seemed infuriated by Bilkszto’s critique, and accused him of being motivated, at least indirectly, by white supremacist bigotry.

Subsequent events would show that this wasn’t an isolated outburst from Ojo-Thompson. During another 2021 training session, this one taking place in the Ontario city of Sarnia, Ojo-Thompson angrily cut short her training contract with the municipality after several trainees had—much like Bilkszto—taken issue with her description of Canadian society. In both cases, Ojo-Thompson seems to have interpreted disagreement as a racist attack directed personally at her.

“What I’m finding interesting is that, in the middle of this COVID disaster, where the inequities in this ‘fair’ and ‘equal’ healthcare system have been properly shown to all of us, you and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people,” she told Bilkszto. “Like, is that what you’re doing? ’Cause I think that’s what you’re doing. But I’m not sure, so I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now.”

None of the other TDSB administrators participating in the Zoom call came to Bilkszto’s defence. The only intervenor was another KOJO facilitator, self-described “decolonization, anti-racism and equity professional” Andrew Snowball, who began piling on against Bilkszto.

“I hate to disagree with you [Bilkszto] in this forum, but it’s just not relevant, what you are bringing up. Unfortunately, the experiences of Indigenous, black, and racialised students in the TDSB in probably whatever school you lead are just not good enough. And that’s just the reality. So, I think if you want to be an apologist for the US or Canada, this is really not the forum for that.”

Before wrapping up the session, Ojo-Thompson mockingly compared Bilkszto to a “weed,” and joked about how she needed to get the “weed whacker out.”

The most charitable interpretation of Ojo-Thompson’s attack on Bilkszto is that she acted impulsively, or had perhaps temporarily misunderstood the tenor of his remarks. But it’s difficult to reconcile that theory with her behaviour during the seminar that followed, a week later. In that session, Ojo-Thompson doubled down on her shaming of Bilkszto (albeit without naming him in this instance). She boasted that her smackdown had modelled the manner by which everyone should act when similarly “accosted by white supremacy.”

In addition to being identified as an agent of white supremacy, Bilkszto was described as a source of “resistance,” who stood in the way of social progress due to his “whiteness.” 

As during the previous session, none of Bilkszto’s colleagues spoke up in his defence. In fact, one participant, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, then the TDSB’s Executive Superintendent, publicly praised Ojo-Thompson for “modelling the discomfort” that a TDSB administrator—by which she meant Bilkszto—“may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR [anti-black racism].”

For good measure, Robinson Petrazzini, who was subsequently named Director of Education for the nearby Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB), then went on social media to announce that Bilkszto (whom she did not name, but whose identity would have been obvious to anyone familiar with the underlying events) had abetted “harm to Black students and families.”...

Thanks to Ojo-Thomspon, Snowball, and Robinson Petrazzini, the word now spread throughout the TDSB rumour mill: The school board had a full-on racist principal on its hands, and his name was Richard Bilkszto.

Bilkszto went on sick leave, understandably consumed by anxiety and shame. The TDSB failed to renew his contract, and Bilkszto never returned to work. Instead, he would spend the last two years of his life trying to clear his name.

In this respect, Bilkszto was successful, as a Google search of his name will indicate: Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) investigated Ojo-Thompson’s actions, and determined that Bilkszto was owed lost pay from the TDSB due to mental stress. More importantly, the WSIB formally concluded that Ojo-Thompson’s behaviour “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying,” and that she’d intended to “cause reputational damage and to ‘make an example’” of Bilkszto...

According to a longtime friend of Bilkszto who spoke to Quillette following his death, fellow TDSB principals had warned him that—based on similar episodes of DEI-related shaming and mobbing they’d observed—any effort to defend himself might backfire. Even discussing his underlying commitment to anti-racism was risky, they said, as it might be decried as an attempt to play the role of “white saviour.”

Such warnings were hardly irrational—and, in at least one case, proved prescient. This being mid-2021, much of the Canadian media establishment, like its American counterpart, was still providing heavily sympathetic coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. 

But by 2023, when Bilkszto’s story finally did make it into the public sphere, the cultural tide had turned somewhat, as BLM’s reputation had been tarnished by financial scandals, and the stigma against critiquing anti-racist activists and DEI bureaucracies had begun to ebb. Indeed, Bilkszto’s “egregious and vexatious” treatment at Ojo-Thompson’s hands went viral internationally, as a symbol of the bullying now being meted out in some quarters in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. One British newspaper headlined its 5 August 2023 report about Bilkszto, “Bully DEI trainer… is heard LAUGHING as she taunts beloved gay school principal… for questioning her woke diktats—as crony [Robinson Petrazzini] who held no-whites school meetings is also identified.”

Despite receiving sympathetic press treatment, however, Bilkszto never fully recovered from his 2021 humiliation. On 13 July 2023, a year ago today, he committed suicide at age 60—just a week after Canada’s National Post newspaper first reported that he was seeking to take the TDSB to court.

It’s always difficult for third parties to know why someone chooses to take his or her own life. But according to his family, Bilkszto’s decision related to the false accusations of racism he’d endured during his TDSB anti-racism training.

One reason why Bilkszto remained so anxious in the months following his ordeal is that Robinson Petrazzini steadfastly refused to delete her tweeted accusation that Bilkszto was somehow a racist menace to the TDSB’s black students.

Documentation obtained by Quillette in 2023 demonstrated that it took Robinson Petrazzini eight months to take down the tweet in question, despite repeated appeals from Bilkszto’s lawyer. The fact that Robinson Petrazzini not only escaped punishment for defaming one of her TDSB colleagues, but in fact was rewarded with a subsequent promotion to the role of Education Director of a neighbouring school board, showed Bilkszto that the attacks against him were being encouraged, or at least tolerated, at the highest administrative levels governing Ontario public education.

Other documents obtained by Quillette indicate that Ojo-Thompson’s lucrative TDSB anti-racism training contract was personally approved by the school board’s then-Associate Director of Equity, Well-Being, and School Improvement, Colleen Russell-Rawlins—and rushed through the required approvals processes in a manner that at least one in-house accounting functionary noted, in writing, seemed unusual.

The documents also indicate there was no competitive bidding, which may help explain the high price tag. This was a sole-source contracting process: Aside from the KOJO Institute, no other DEI training company seems to have been considered.  

In a section of the TDSB documentation requiring signing officers to explain their use of a sole-source bidding method, Russell-Rawlins (or one of her subordinates) simply pasted in boilerplate promotional text that had been plagiarised directly from the “About KOJO Institute” section of Ojo-Thompson’s corporate website, without bothering to correct grammatical errors contained in the original text...

If Russell-Rawlins suffered any professional consequences for her role in recruiting Ojo-Thompson, they’ve not yet been publicly reported. Just a few months after Ojo-Thompson delivered her TDSB anti-racism lectures in Spring 2021, in fact, Russell-Rawlins was promoted to the role of TDSB Director of Education.

(Earlier this year, Russell-Rawlins announced her retirement, following a three-year tenure marked by other scandals connected to her social-justice agenda, including a mismanaged student census aimed at advancing “Quantitative Critical Race Theory”; a teardown of the merit-based selection system used by the TDSB’s popular specialty schools; and a book-club ban of Nobel Prize laureate Nadia Murad’s 2017 memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, on the claim that the Yazidi refugee’s words might promote Islamophobia.)

A review of the record shows that this wasn’t the first time Russell-Rawlins and Ojo-Thompson had crossed paths professionally. While Russell-Rawlins was performing her short stint as interim Education Director for the PDSB between August 2020 and August 2021, her board hired Ojo-Thompson to run what appears to have been a similar multi-part lecture series, styled as “Anti-Black Racism Training for Leaders in Education.”...

All this was part of a larger trend in Ontario that played out during late 2020 and 2021, as a number of the province’s school-board education directorships were turned over to incoming administrators with professional backgrounds rooted in DEI. This cohort included not only Russell-Rawlins at TDSB and Robinson Petrazzini at HWDSB, but also Curtis Ennis at Halton District School Board (HDSB) and Waterloo Region District School Board Education Director jeewan chanicka (who spells his name with lower-case letters because, according to a sympathetic 2022 media profile, “he identifies with his Polynesian Indigenous spirituality and says that he doesn’t give more importance to himself than his surroundings, including animals, bodies of water and trees”).

Other boards that became clients of the KOJO Institute during this period included HDSB, Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board, Halton Catholic, Thames Valley, and York Region District School Board (YRDSB). As discussed in detail below, the latter hosted Ojo-Thompson in April 2021, shortly after kicking off its “Dismantling Anti-Black Racism Strategy,” which advocated for the creation of “black-affirming learning and working environments” as well as a “culturally relevant and black-affirming curriculum.”

Amid this flurry of new hires and anti-racism directives in Ontario, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ojo-Thompson’s high fees and questionable teaching methods didn’t receive more scrutiny. TDSB public announcements and internal documents from this period routinely described anti-racist training as an “urgent” school-board imperative—one that everyone on staff was expected to wholeheartedly support. 

Once ensconced as TDSB’s Education Director, Russell-Rawlins seems to have become consumed with a survey project aimed at measuring the scope of racism within her school board. While that project was botched by her staff and later abandoned, the initiative reflected her apparent fixation on rooting out ideologically suspect elements on staff. A 12-page PDSB policy on “Discriminatory Slurs and Statements in Learning Environments,” put into force under her stewardship in March 2021, went so far as to promote a dedicated snitch line that educators were required to use if they overheard problematic language among their colleagues. (The document urged staff to “Save the Reporting Email [Address] to your Desktop for easy and immediate access.”)

These “mandatory reporting” requirements apply to all staff members who “become aware of [allegedly] discriminatory slurs and statements” through “social media, in conversation between colleagues or with students, in staff rooms or staff meetings.” Section 5 of the policy specifies that “Failure by any School Staff, including Teachers, Principals, Vice-Principals, Superintendents and all other School Staff, to comply… may be seen as Condoning the use of discriminatory slurs and statements in PDSB’s learning environments.”

But while Russell-Rawlins has been an especially vigorous ideological enforcer, at both PDSB and TDSB, she is far from alone. Many of the Ontario public school teachers who spoke to Quillette for this article were aware of at least one instance in which a co-worker had been investigated on suspicion of saying or writing something alleged to have been racially insensitive. One teacher commented ruefully that many classrooms now seem to have two teachers—the one who is teaching, and the one who is “at home, being investigated for racism.”

To cite one recent example: a principal, vice-principal, and teacher at John Fisher Junior Public School in Toronto were placed on home assignment for fifteen months based on false accusations that they’d locked up a six-year-old black child on school premises—despite the fact that both police and the local Children’s Aid Society had already cleared all concerned of wrongdoing. Like Bilkszto, the accused principal never returned to work.

(The exoneration of these educators was heavily criticised by an oft-quoted activist group known as Parents of Black Children—PoBC—which has regularly promoted allegations of racism at Toronto-area schools. Following the TDSB announcement that no wrongdoing had been found at John Fisher, PoBC complained that investigators hadn’t applied “an anti-black-racism lens.” In July 2023, the same group collaborated with Ojo-Thompson in a bid to rehabilitate her professional reputation amid the backlash following Bilkszto’s suicide. It later emerged that Ojo-Thompson had been one of the group’s board members, though her name had been scrubbed from the group’s site without explanation.)...

Most of the educators who spoke with Quillette for this article are, as Bilkszto was, originally sympathetic to the social-justice messaging that Ontario school boards began vigorously proselytising in 2020. Over time, however, they became concerned that this rhetoric, often communicated through esoteric academic jargon, seemed detached from the real needs of TDSB students, black or otherwise.

Even now, more than three years after George Floyd’s death, TDSB-directed professional-development efforts continue to focus on the dissemination of anti-racist tracts, including one 2024 instalment titled, Facilitating Critical Conversations: A Teaching Resource for Challenging Oppression. Among the “core beliefs” advanced by the document is that “education is a colonial structure that centres whiteness and Eurocentricity, and therefore it must be actively decolonized.” (Three of the four authors are billed as experts in hip hop music—including one specialising in “Hip Hop as Critical Relevant Responsive Pedagogy.”)

One of the educators who spoke with Quillette about her experiences was “Margaret,” a veteran teacher with York Region District School Board, whose territory is situated north of Toronto, extending through the satellite cities of Vaughan, Markham, and Richmond Hill.

Like other teachers interviewed for this article, Margaret didn’t want her real name used, due to fears of professional repercussions. Not so long ago, someone in her position might have relied upon her union to ensure that she wouldn’t be punished for voicing concerns about school-board policies. But many Ontario teachers’ unions are now heavily invested in the same aggressive DEI policies championed by their members’ employers. 

At least one union, part of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, even racially gerrymandered its internal voting system in 2021 to allow extra votes for non-white members (going so far as to produce an animated video justifying the move). In another case, the then-Equity Chair for an Ontario elementary teachers’ union—a woman named Sara Savoia—publicly demanded “consequences” for a fellow teacher whom she accused of transphobia.

Margaret describes the DEI seminars she’s been asked to attend as cultish propaganda sessions, in which instructors demand that audience members scour their minds for evidence of subconscious racism. By way of example, she showed Quillette an image from a virtual event conducted during the 2021–2022 academic year. The graphic is emblazoned with bold-text refrains to be repeated by audience members in the style of ritualised affirmations featured at addiction-recovery programmes—as in, “I will accept that the institution of Education is an instrumental tool for maintaining and furthering the ideology of White Supremacy.” (Just in case anyone in the audience should require evidence to back up such propositions, a caveat informs them, “It is not the responsibility of people with intersecting marginalized identities to prove this.”)

A prevalent theme in these materials, borrowed from the idiom of psychoanalysis and consciousness-raising self-help retreats, is that audience members should be expected to tolerate—and even welcome—psychic pain; on the premise that such suffering is a necessary step toward casting out the comforting self-delusions that uphold white supremacy.  

As Ojo-Thompson’s attacks on Bilkszto show, this claim is effectively unfalsifiable, since any expressed objection is taken as proof that the dissenting party has been thrown into an emotional crisis—exactly as the instructor had intended. And to such extent that the dissident fails to resolve this (welcome) crisis in an ideologically correct manner, it is assumed that he or she must simply be too lazy, stubborn, or racist to pay the psychic price of liberation.

“Zack” is a younger YRDSB teacher, in his early thirties. He reports that most of the professional-development (PD) instruction he’s received in recent years has been related in some way to racism. And most of that, he reports, has been specifically focused on anti-black racism, despite the fact that blacks represent only about 4.3% of Canada’s population. (By comparison, more than 19% of Canadians self-describe as being of Asian descent.)

“Courtney,” another YRDSB teacher, puts things more bluntly: “Ever since the pandemic, anti-black racism has been the priority. [Most] of our professional-development staff meetings are about anti-black racism. It sometimes seems like it’s all they talk about.”

In some cases, school-board administrators have repurposed the social-justice messaging surrounding Canadian Indigenous issues as a means to promote black-focused equity mantras. Many Ontario teachers are now required to recite something called an “African ancestry statement ”—a newly appropriated variation on Indigenous land acknowledgements. One representative example from the Halton Catholic District School Board voices acknowledgement for “the generations of people of African descent who were forcibly brought to this land and displaced around the world as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

While such gestures may be well-intentioned, they reflect a flawed understanding of Canadian history. The highest number of slaves who ever lived in pre-Confederation Canada was about 4,000 (approximately two thirds of whom were Indigenous). No slave ships ever brought enslaved Africans to the St. Lawrence Valley, and the British banned slavery more than three decades before Canada came into existence as an independent country. The vast bulk of Canada’s current black population originates with immigrants who freely moved to Canada in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

“It’s basically my job to take the ‘progressive’ anti-oppressive, anti-colonial, DEI policies from the [school] board and figure out how to pass them on to the staff,” reports “Timothy,” a School Success head with Peel District School Board. “How I ended up here is a newsworthy story in itself. Suffice it to say that I’ve sold pieces of my soul, and what redemption I may find [will be in leaking] these [PDSB] policies to people who are able to speak out.”...

During an audience-participation interlude, Ojo-Thompson asks educators what steps they can take to become “anti-oppressive” teachers. Most of the responses leave Ojo-Thompson unimpressed—until a vice-principal piques Ojo-Thompson’s interest by announcing, “I’m going to say something different.” 

“I think what was required in [my] body was to learn how to speak in a code of whiteness,” says the senior administrator, a white woman. She then goes on to state that educational tools “steeped” in whiteness are used to assess teaching competency.

While it isn’t clear what the educator means by “whiteness,” the tone of her comment dovetails with Ojo-Thompson’s general belief that the polite conventions of Canadian professional life mask an existential power struggle between anti-racists and racists. And so everyone in the audience needs to pick the right side—or else live with the knowledge that they are on the wrong side of history...

Ojo-Thompson then (falsely) claims that public authorities in what is now Canada compensated slave owners for their economic losses following Britain’s passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. By this rewriting of history, she contends, abolition was, paradoxically, a mark of shame...

In fact, there is no evidence that authorities in what is now Canada paid off anyone for giving up what few slaves existed in the territory. But if anyone in the audience regarded her history lessons with skepticism, they certainly weren’t saying so. In fact, a vice-principal took this juncture as an opportunity to commend Ojo-Thompson, declaring that “we need to have these conversations from K to 12.”

Ojo-Thompson clearly agrees, telling the audience that her precepts should inform a top-down programme of “enforcement monitoring, tracking, evaluation, [and] performance management” at their school boards...

There then follow more history lessons about Canada, which Ojo-Thompson now suggests was once the site of a full-blown slave economy comparable to that of antebellum Kentucky or Virginia...It’s not clear what inspired this fictional tale of Toronto being constructed by slaves. But, for perspective, one researcher found that there were exactly fifteen black people living in the colonial town of York (which later became Toronto) in 1799, roughly thirty years before the British abolished slavery in Canada...

Ojo-Thompson them moved through a thumbnail history of the twentieth century, whereby the racism that informed chattel slavery has been embedded not only in modern Canadian institutions, but also—by her apocalyptic description—“globally, and in your synagogue, mosque, church, your child’s daycare, the Grade One classes, the Grade 12 classes. Everywhere at all times, the legacies are being upheld.”

Even black success stories comprise evidence of racism, Ojo-Thompson contends, because “the black kid who is defined as a leader also tends to be the black kid who can perform whiteness the best.”  

When the class finishes and the audience drifts away, one participant, a school principal, speaks to Ojo-Thompson on a one-on-one basis. On the Zoom recording, the white woman can be heard saying, “I want to thank you. I think I’ve done a lot of my own unpacking sitting here in my white body and doing this work.”...

The main theme of Ojo-Thompson’s third and fourth classes is that Canadian society isn’t just racist, but comprises a full-on “white supremacist system”—much like South Africa under apartheid, the American Deep South during the Jim Crow era, or even Nazi Germany...

Raising the moral stakes, Ojo-Thompson even goes so far as to suggest that her own physical well-being may depend on the willingness of her audience members to follow her anti-racist teaching: “As a black woman in this province, I cannot express enough, how much you taking this up is a matter of life or death. It’s absolutely a matter of liberation for our community that you all will decide to do this.”

One might think that casually comparing Canada to Hitler’s Germany would arouse pushback from the assembled school administrators who comprise Ojo-Thompson’s audience. But as at other junctures, the only audience comments are from administrators eager to demonstrate their agreement, often by using the same opaque jargon favoured by their instructor...

Eventually, a male educator speaks up—one of the few men to participate. He doesn’t tell a story or offer self-deprecating pieties, but rather voices his concern that his fellow staffers back at his school may take a casual or even dismissive view of the transformative anti-racist lessons he’ll soon be preaching to them. 

At this, Cecil Roach, the Superintendent of Equity and Engagement for YRDSB, jumps in to reassure everyone that “we have clear accountability measures built into the strategy… This work will not stop and we’ll be leaning into the work and ensuring that folks are held accountable for the results that are expected.”

“I have to tell you,” he adds, “the [Ontario] Ministry [of Education] is also working on an anti-black racism strategy that all districts are going to be expected to implement along with accountability measures that could be determined by things such as appraisals.” 

This leads Ojo-Thompson into a discussion of the best way to deal with “resistance tactics”—including the “dominance culture traps” that she lists as (1) the presumption of neutrality, (2) meritocracy, and (3) neoliberalism.

These ideas, Ojo-Thompson tells her audience, comprise a destructive “vortex” that surrounds us everywhere...

Other listed evils include “colourblindness,” fear of political correctness, and the practice of acting as a “devil’s advocate” when conversing with anti-racists. The bottom left-hand corner of the graphic features yet another pledge for audience members to recite and internalise, this one aimed at ensuring they will “continue to learn about the water and how I reinforce it, and how I benefit from white supremacy—even if I am against it.”

Perhaps the most shocking claim relayed by Ojo-Thompson to these YRDSB educators is that they are all employed by a white-supremacist institution...

Several participants voice their agreement. No one asks why this supposedly white supremacist entity, the YRDSB, had enlisted Ojo-Thompson to lecture its employees—at considerable cost—about the evils of the same racist creed that supposedly comprises its mission. (No doubt, the YRDSB’s 15 current trustees would be shocked to hear Ojo-Thompson’s disturbing news, especially given that at least half of them, including the chair, are either Asian or black.)

As she closes, Ojo-Thompson instructs the white audience members on how best to demonstrate their gratitude when someone—such as Ojo-Thompson herself—informs them that they are racist.

“If someone comes to you, and gives you the gift of correction, thank them, honour them. [Say] ‘Thank you so much for telling me. I am so sorry,’” she says. “Invite them to tell you this again… And again and again and again.”

A number of audience members then obediently express their appreciation to Ojo-Thompson, including one who exalts the instructor’s “learning and integrity.”

Despite all her dark visions of racist dystopia, the instructor sounds genuinely happy as she receives thanks from these grateful admirers—the “us” she’s craved since her teenage years.

Clearly, this is Kike Ojo-Thompson’s place in the sun."

 

Related:

Jonathan Kay on X - "Kike Ojo-Thompson—whose false accusations of racism against Richard Bilkszto preceded his suicide, and whose DEI style was subsequently denounced as “abusive, egregious & vexatious” by WSIB—is now Human Capital” partner at @DeloitteCanada, charged with workplace “transformation”"
Jonathan Kay on X - "new FOI documents in regard to @DeloitteCanada “Human Capital” expert Kike Ojo-Thompson—via the Ontario education ministry, re: Richard Bilkszto (R.I.P.). Including: her letter to Lecce, claiming that her vexatious attack on Bilkszto (falsely linking him to white supremacy) was merely a "teachable moment.” Also, another Toronto teacher wrote Lecce to say s/he had an identical experience with Kojo."